


Dust

by boxxed



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:42:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25638241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxxed/pseuds/boxxed
Summary: "I think I've been missing you."
Relationships: The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Rose Tyler, Thirteenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45





	Dust

The Doctor opened her eyes, feeling like she'd woken from a long, dreamless sleep. She hadn't; it was too cold, the ground beneath her back, too hard. She lay outside, the grass damp with evening dew slowly seeping through her coat and looked out at the stars overhead. Thousands of them glittered and winked down at her, one shot across the great expanse, disappearing over the horizon. 

"Make a wish," said Rose. She was staring into the night sky when the Doctor turned her head to look, her eyes bright with the moonlight that washed out her features like a marble statue. It felt almost surprising that she was there.

As if sensing her gaze, she turned, too. Her smile was a soft quirk of the lips and a shift of her body so they were an inch closer. 

"You okay?" She asked with all the hush that the silence required. 

"Perfect, now," said the Doctor. "I think I've been missing you."

Rose laughed, not quiet because she never could, and turned back to the night. "You "think"? I suppose it's only been two days, so I'll let you off. Maybe I think I missed you, too." On the subject of missing, the Doctor suspected she had it worst; two days or a thousand, it was all the same. 

"There was something I was meant to say to you," said the Doctor, "but it's slipped my mind."

"That I'm the light of your life?"

"Shockingly, no, but if that's what your ego needs to hear…?"

"Nah, don't want it if it's not from the hearts. And my ego is _fine_ , thank you very much."

The Doctor sat up and got on her knees, facing Rose and solemnly placed both hands over her own chest. "Rose Tyler," she said, "you are the light of my life."

"Don't be gross," said Rose, but she was already rising up and pulling the Doctor towards her by the lapels and kissing her. She wrapped her arms around her neck and held her close, and the Doctor felt all the rush of a first kiss, even though it wasn’t. "Come on, we're late."

"Fashionably?"

"Hmm, no. Fashionably was about…" she picked her phone off the grass and lit up the screen, "fifteen minutes ago. If we go now, we'll be there before careening straight into rude."

She got up, smoothing down the fine layers of her dress skirt like she was beating a carpet. She made a hurrying motion with her hands as the Doctor still lay watching her because this thing they were doing, it wouldn't last forever, and once again, as she had many times before, the Doctor found herself immersing herself in small actions, committing them to memory. Then Rose reached down to offer a hand that she took and pulled herself up. She didn't fix her clothing but let Rose run her fingers through the back of her hair to tidy it. 

They traipsed through the park and out of the rusted green gates with their shoes covered in wet grass. The road was empty, stretching straight in each direction, lit by hazy streetlights until it disappeared into the fog. There was only one building on the other side: a flat-roofed, brown brick bungalow with a step leading up to the front entrance that had been covered with a corrugated metal ramp and a sign nailed to the front that the Doctor couldn't make out. It looked like every other social club in Britain, except for the front doors with which were painted pillar box red and had probably been reclaimed from a old church. One stood open slightly, and a slither of light fell across the pathway.

Opening it wide and stepping through was momentarily blinding. The reception hallway was lit with white fluorescence but the front desk was empty. The Doctor expected it wasn't presently being manned but felt compelled to ring the bell, anyway, even if only to break the dead silence. Half way down, propped on a easel on the worn, eighties carpet was a wooden arrow proclaiming "this way!" in a fancy script, pointing to a closed door. The frosted widow had been covered so the inside couldn't be seen, or so the outside couldn't be seen from the inside. Rose headed straight for it, taking the Doctors hand and pulling her along for the ride. 

It was like night and day. Bright to dark. Quiet to loud. Empty to heaving. It felt like what the Doctor imagined others felt when they stepped into the TARDIS for the first time: entirely unexpected, one world to another. There were plenty of people she didn't know, blurred faces of a crowd coming and going like they were ghosts in her periphery even when directly in front of her, but there were plenty she did. In fact, she didn't think she'd ever seen so many of her friends congregated in one place before. 

The Ponds were two of the only people dancing on the dancefloor, Bill was sat on a table while a small group surrounding her laughed at whatever she was saying, and was that Jamie? Still in his kilt and seemingly having the time of his life. The Doctor would blink and there was something or someone else to catch her eye. Strobes would black out and each time they lit back up, the scene they illuminated would change, the ever changing colours of the disco lights rendering each one dreamlike and whimsical.

"Remind me," the Doctor shouted in Rose's ear, "what's this all about?"

"Oh, you know," said Rose, waving a dismissive hand, "just a get together."

"Remember, we still need to find-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, it can wait five minutes, though, can't it?"

Of course it could; the building wasn't big, probably another two function rooms at most, an offices, the bathrooms. They had until one, perhaps, until the remaining stragglers were all kicked out. Hours to search, and not all of them needed.

At the packed bar, Rose muscled her way through, squeezing herself into a space between two gigantic men, made an order that the Doctor couldn't hear and a few minutes later, popped out again, handing her something pink in a large vase-shaped beer glass. Whatever it was, it tasted like static and fizzed in her mouth like popping candy. She abandoned it on a table that had become a graveyard for empty glasses, some with fag butts floating in the dregs and turning it a gross sewage-colour. 

The Doctor took some time doing the things she wasn't very good at, mostly small talk and pleasantries. Listening as old friends told her about their lives and admonished her for not better keeping in touch. It was never an easy thing to hear, that she'd been missed by people she often thought of but rarely saw. She had the habit of dragging trouble wherever she went, and so avoided anyone she didn't want to bring it to unnecessarily.

Interactions blurred into one another and one would be almost forgotten the moment it finished. All that was left was a residue of loss and the thought that it was such a bizarre collection of people to be gathered in a single space. She saw Martha talking to Jamie and wondered when they'd met. Perhaps this was the first time but they seemed familiar with one another, laughing in a way suggestive of an inside joke. 

A light touch on her shoulder signalled the reappearance of Rose who had been roped in elsewhere while the Doctor struggled. She wished, with only a little guilt, that it was just the two of them, if only for a bit so they might make up for lost time.

"Having fun?" Rose asked, like she already knew the answer.

"Hard to say," said the Doctor. She felt lightheaded, her eyes darting to every flash of colour, voices drowned by music and music drowned by voices. She was better off elsewhere. "I really think we should get going."

Rose pursed her lips and nodded. She took her hand, pulled her closer than strictly necessary, then leant in to press her mouth against the Doctors ear. "Best make it look like we don't want to be followed, then," she said and stood back, biting her smile in a way that made it impossible to misinterpret what she meant. Rose was good at flirting and, unlike most people, good at making it obvious she was doing it, even when she wasn't. 

"I have a reputation to uphold, you know," said the Doctor, who had rarely been as adept, "I'm quite respected in some circles."

"Indulge me," said Rose and she began to pull her towards the door. The Doctor half jogged until they were walking side-by-side. She pressed a quick kiss to the bare part of Rose's shoulder and quickly looked away. Rose responded by bumping their hips together, her skirt rustling, and knocking the Doctor slightly off kilter in a pleasant sort of way. 

"Where to, first?" She asked.

The Doctor thought. She had no plan of action, that wasn't her style, after all. "Where would you keep something you didn't want someone to find? Under the floorboards? A safe? Back office?"

"If I was trying to hide something," said Rose, "I wouldn't keep it where literally everyone would expect to find your valuables. Like, anywhere that any old rando burglar would go straight for. Just saying."

"Well, do you have any better ideas?"

"At present? No."

"Then let's eliminate the obvious and go from there."

The main office door was a right turn at the end of the reception corridor, a clear pane allowing them to check that it was empty before breaking and entering. On the other side of the room was another door presumably leading to the still unmanned reception and in between them was two desks and a few assorted cabinets. It was incredibly dated and everything from the faded orange wallpaper to the fax machine suggested a lack of renovation in decades. A glass-shaded lamp on one of the desks was switched on, casting long, stark shadows across the room.

The Doctor chose to sit at the accompanying computer, a light grey tower, the likes of which wouldn't be seen again after the mid-two thousands, and tried booting it up. Nothing happened. 

"I thought you wanted to find a safe?" Said Rose, opening a mall-mounted cupboard and closing it again when all she found was stationary but not before a couple of dozen of pens fell out. She didn't pick them up, just scooted them against the wall with her trainer. 

"I do. I just thought maybe I could find some information that could help."

"On a desktop that looks like it's been there since nineteen ninety six?"

"Old setups are far more secure to use if you're up to no good."

"Right."

"If you know what you're doing, they're virtually impossible to track. Much more difficult to achieve on modern machines. Not for me, obviously"

"Fascinating. Well... is it plugged in?"

The Doctor rolled her eyes to which Rose gave her the dirtiest looking imaginable, so she checked anyway, surprised to find that she was right; a fact that she was forced to sheepishly admit. Not only was it not plugged in, but there didn't seem to be any wires around, at all. She checked the other; the same. She opened the desk drawers for evidence that anything in the room was actually being used. Nada. Maybe they were just for show, leftovers from a time before laptops. 

"What makes you so sure it's here, anyway?" Said Rose. She was flicking through a filing cabinet, occasionally pulling out a folder or piece of paper to skim before replacing it. "Nothing here says sci-fi to me, just an inevitable pending visit from HMRC.”

"I have a feeling."

"You're joking, right?"

"Of course not. Look, I just need you to trust me on this."

"I _do_ trust you. But a feeling isn't gonna get us far when you barely even know what you're looking for."

"I know what I'm looking for; a device."

"A device? That narrows it."

"A weapon."

"A weapon."

"Yes, a weapon. I'll know when I see it."

Rose shrugged and went back to flicking through dodgy tax returns. "I swear everything they're selling here is illegal. Fake drinks license, fake booze, fake crisps. Who sells fake crisps? The economy’s not that bad. Might keep some of this as blackmail because if we get caught in here, we're gonna be in sooo much trouble."

"You like trouble."

Rose hummed and closed the drawer with a metallic _slam_ and the Doctor cringed at the volume. "True," she said, turning to the Doctor with a wicked grin and her hands tucked neatly behind her back. She swayed over until they were standing face-to-face, placed her arms around her neck and kissed her. The Doctor could feel her smile and melted against it. 

"You know," said the Doctor after a moment, "the longer we're in here, the more likely it is that we'll actually get caught, especially if you keep making a racket."

Rose kissed her again, once on the mouth and then on the skin of her neck just below the ear. "I can be quick," she said, "and quiet, if I put my mind to it."

"I don't doubt it but-"

"But you're no fun. I know." She relinquished her with an fond, exasperated sigh. "Unfortunately, I love you anyway." Something caught her attention from over the Doctors shoulder and she slid past, placing a light touch to her arm as she did. She bent down to examine the side of a desk and ran a hand over the smooth panel, paused, then pressed an invisible button into the wood. When she did, a distinct click came from the inside the desk. Rose wagged her eyebrows in triumph, evidently pleased with herself. 

It took three tries to find the right drawer, but when she did, she burst out laughing. "Found your weapon," said Rose. From her index finger she dangled a gun by the trigger.

The Doctor rolled her eyes. "If only."

"You sure you've not been duped?" Rose did a fanciful trick by which she threw the gun in the air with a spin and caught and aimed it straight at the Doctor's head. "Not devastating enough?" It was. The Doctor didn't like guns, but in Rose's hands, with her hip and eyebrow cocked and her lips slightly parted, well, they certainly looked good. 

"Not remotely."

"You're probably right; it's only a BB gun. These are the shittiest criminals in the galaxy." She tossed it back in the drawer and shut it back up. "I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the people running this joint aren't the sort to be keeping a hyperbomb in their back office; there's not even any cocaine."

"Not all petty career criminals do cocaine."

"No, I think you'll find they do."

"They don't even have a safe, by the looks of it."

“And if they do, there wouldn’t be anything interesting in it , anyway. Come on, I saw stairs going to a basement. It's a little on the nose, but as good a place as any if it's a rented space."

The Doctor hadn't noticed any stairs on the way over at all but nodded like she had. "Lead the way," she said. She wasn't sure how she'd missed them; when they stepped out of the office they were right there, on the other side of the hall with a green, neon sign box reading: STAFF ONLY at eye-level directly above the mouth. 

From the top, the basement appeared so dark that no shadows were cast, and upon dissent, the situation didn't improve. Against all logic, she found herself worrying that they would never reach the end; that they would keep going and going until they were trapped in the deepest pits of the earth, too tired to climb back out again. There was no railing to guide them or to tether to should one miss a step and fall. She kept going.

It wasn't until her foot struck hard on the concrete floor of the basement was the Doctor able to see again. It was by no means bright; the dank space was illuminated only by red emergency lighting that required the eyes to adjust before being much use. Rose used the flash of her phone to search for a light switch with no luck. The immediate walls were almost entirely blank whitewashed brick with the exception of water stains and some dangling wires, their ends raw and occasionally sparking. Rose picked one up by the plastic and held it uncomfortably close to her face. 

"Health and safety violation, right here," she said before dropping it again, letting it nestle back into its cluster. 

Unlike the walls, the floor was packed. Everywhere there were crates stacked too high and plastic sheets littered what could be seen of the concrete between them. The boxes nearest the stairs were what would be expected, crates of bottles drinks, cardboard boxes of bar snacks, reams of printer paper, but as they left the relative normality of the stair place and traversed further into the labyrinth, the packing labels were increasingly stuck alongside warnings. **Danger. Toxic. Highly Flammable. Keep Out of the Reach of Children.**

"Surely, it's not _this_ obvious," said Rose, her skirt flaring as she spun around, searching.

The Doctor opened a box she could actually reach and found exactly what would be found inside a metal case labelled: Warning! Nuclear Material Inside. "Well, it's not a front."

"Maybe there is no weapon. Just the stuff to build one."

"Maybe. I don't think so, but maybe."

They began searching the accessible crates, careful not to disturb anything around them that might be volatile, acutely aware that there was a function room full of their friends approximately just above them. Everything was what it said it was. No surprises, helpful or otherwise. 

The Doctor blew her hair out of her face in frustration. "I know there’s something here."

"Are you trying to convince me, or yourself?"

"I know there’s something here. I _know_."

A dull thud came from the other side of the room. The two looked at each other.

"Could be a draught," said Rose. 

"Wishful thinking?"

"With us? Almost definitely."

"Still wanna check it out?"

Rose grinned wide and said "race you" before vanishing in a blur of speed. The Doctor swore softly and rushed off after her, minding that she didn't knock into anything. She only caught glimpses of her blonde hair when she wove around corners, guiding her to her correct location but never quite catching up. When she did, she saw Rose's back first, shoulders stiff and fists clenched at her sides.

Then she saw behind her. It was oily black, seven feet tall and dripping an oozing substance from its skin onto the floor. It had no visible eyes, but it's gaping mouth held rows of teeth the size of box cutters. Each one glistened in the low light. 

"I don't think it can hear," whispered Rose.

"If it can't hear, then why are we whispering?"

"I said I _think_. What is it?”

"An alien."

"Har-fucking-har. _You're_ an alien but you don't look like _that_."

"Would you still fancy me if I did?"

"Oh, shut up."

The truth was that the Doctor had no idea what it was. She had even less of an idea what it was doing in the basement of a social club established by the lowest running crooks. It wasn't even locked up, huge as it was, unable to navigate the space it was kept in without causing a disaster. As slow as she could manage, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her sonic screwdriver, pointed it at the creature to at least get a reading and-

It was gone. She had pressed the button, and with it, the thing disappeared, ooze and all. The only evidence it had been there was an industrial vat that had been knocked over, alerting them to the fact that it was even there. 

"What," said Rose, her voice sounding louder than usual, "the fuck."

The Doctor concurred the sentiment. "Didn't like sonic, apparently." She bent down and ran her fingers across the rough ground, picking up dust as they went. She sniffed them and it made her sneeze.

She stood back up, wiping the dust off on her coat and noticed what had been behind the creature. A pair of floor length curtains affixed to the wall by a brass pole, velvet and deep maroon. There was something decidedly off about them, like they weren’t supposed to be there.

"Secret room, maybe?" Said Rose as the Doctor grabbed hold of them, one in each hand.

"Painting that ages instead of the subject, laying bare all their sins?"

It was neither of those things. She tore the curtains open in one swift motion and behind them was a window. A plain, square window in a white, plastic frame sat at the height a widow would normally be sat. The glass was clear but the other side was black. Not like compressed dirt or a concrete foundation as would be expected, but the black vacuum of space. Void. 

The Doctor moved from side to side, tying to see something, anything but there was nothing past her faint reflection. Rose got in the way when she tried to look out but eventually shrugged at her, unable to provide an explanation. The Doctor put her face to the glass with her hands cupped around her eyes to block out the indoor lighting. She squinted as if it would make all the difference. She thought if she squinted enough, she could make stars appear.

A minute passed, maybe two and finally, mercifully, something began to shift. The image beyond the frame wasn't blank, there were hints of shadows, suggestions of movement. There was life and the Doctor found herself desperate to touch it. The shapes became more distinct. There was a face. A man. She recognized him. Of course she recognised him; it was Jack. He was watching her with his arms crossed and a concerned expression, worry lines as deep as she'd ever seen them. 

She called his name and heard Rose repeat it in confusion. She called again and he frowned further, said something to someone she couldn't see. He began to walk closer and as he did, she took a step back, viewing the whole window, worried the view to the other side would cease. It didn't. 

Jack walked towards them, growing larger with every step. He hadn't seemed so far away when she first saw him, but by the time he was truly up close, his face took up almost the entire frame like he was looking down the lens of a camera. A giant watching over them. She saw him mouth the word _Doctor_ , and _are you there_ and what she thought was _can you hear me?_ He took no notice of Rose.

There was no point in answering his question so she said his name again and he smiled, the relief apparent on his face. He was forced out of shot by a woman. Yaz. Yaz! _Are you okay,_ she asked.

"Yes," said the Doctor. 

When Yaz went to say something else, the vision turned back to black as quick as if the power plug had been pulled.

“Wait, no,” said the Doctor. “Yaz! Jack! Come back!” But as she hollered, the black faded all together, leaving behind nothing more than dirty, whitewashed brick behind the glass. It was just a window hanging on a wall when it shouldn't be.

Panic surged through her chest and she found herself banging on the glass for their return. It didn't shudder under her pounding. She had to get back. She had to _get back_. 

She turned to Rose like a whip. "What is this place?"

She expected her to proclaim ignorance or not at all, but instead she said "I can't tell you."

"But you know."

Rose didn't say anything, her answer hanging in the silence waiting to be plucked. 

"You can't say."

And still she said nothing. 

"Why?"

Nothing.

"What are you?"

"Rose."

The Doctor shook her head because she wanted it to be true but realised it wasn't. She turned around and found the room newly empty. Not even an innocuous box of crisps left by the stairwell remained, just concrete and a single, bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, although the space was still flooded with the same red tinge that was now clear came from nowhere. Because it wasn't real.

She thought of Bill, chatting and laughing with a group of indistinct faces and she remembered Bill with the gaping whole in her chest. And the Ponds dancing, and then their names written on their graves. And Jamie was dead long before any of them were even born, most of his memories of them together, gone long before that. She hadn't checked in on Martha in years.

And Rose. She had left Rose on a beach in the arms someone else without saying goodbye, without the possibility of seeing her again. She never would; just the illusion standing beside her. 

But the weapon was real. Or something was real. She was hunting it. She turned back to window to try and bring back the view of the real world, to ask Jack or Yaz to fill the gaps but it was gone. The curtains remained, hanging in mockery of what she wanted and the Doctor resisted the urge to tear them down. She wanted to scream.

"It's cheating," said Rose, and although the Doctor knew she wasn't Rose, she couldn't tell the difference. "You can't ask them; she was going to give it away so it cut her off." She sounded too sympathetic to be a shell, too much like she cared. She should disappear like the cargo, if that's all she was. It wasn't fair that she got to keep breaking hearts. 

"You're not real," the Doctor told her, her rage gone as quick as it came, leaving behind the resignation. Rose pressed her lips together in a suggestion of a smile. "This is just a simulation with something hidden inside, I remember. I came… Jack and Yaz are waiting for me to find it and I don't think I can leave until I do. Because that's the point. You're supposed to get caught up here, never find it and… what happens to someone trapped too long in a computer? Was it a computer? The people to code pipeline is unpleasant, I know that much. The program wasn't designed with someone like me in mind, though. I'm much too clever."

"Too old," said Rose. She wasn't making fun, just stating a fact.

The Doctor paced for a few moments before heading out of the basement, taking sweeping strides across the empty room, the heavy fall of her footsteps echoing as she went. Behind her, she could still hear Rose quietly following. Maybe she wasn't actually there. Maybe it was just the sound of her playing as a trick. 

Upstairs didn't look any different from how they'd left it except now the office door was closed. A white, horizontal blind had been pulled over the window to block to view in. She tried the handle. Locked. If she forced it open, if such a thing were possible, she suspected she would find in empty. There was no point in pretending it was there; it was a waste of power to unnecessarily render something into existence once the game was up.

She pressed her forehead against the cool glass and closed here eyes, as if she could will herself to sleep and wake in the real world. She turned to Rose who may or may not have been there the whole time. "How am I meant to find something when the place I'm looking isn't even real?"

Rose cocked her head to one side, her eyebrows knitted. "It's a program," she said. 

"I know that. _I_ told _you_ that. But that doesn't really help me, does it?"

"It's a program," she said, again, softer, more forceful.

"I don't know what that means."

"You're the only real thing here." She said, deliberately. 

"Hell, I wish I wasn't," said the Doctor, throwing her arms in the air but Rose didn't respond again. She stood deathly still with her arms crossed over her chest. She wasn't real. Ones and zeros. Her eyes were vacant. No real use to anyone, to the Doctor, without- 

"Oh, that's it!" Exclaimed the Doctor and Rose returned to life, clasping her hands together with a clap and beaming. " _I'm_ the input; this whole thing revolves around me. It wants me to get lost, get eaten up into the code so it first gives me the stars and _you_ and bullshits me into thinking it makes sense. Not very well, obviously, because how could it? Like you said, I'm too old; there's not a processor in the universe that could handle all my baggage."

Rose was watching her with all the joy she remembered, the joy of solving and the possibility of doing something good in the world. It hurt to see her.

"You won't even try to stop me. The moment I leave, _poof_ , you're gone." She placed a pair of fingers on Rose's forehead. "Despite everything, your A.I.'s too clever. Rose would die if it meant saving the world," she ran her fingers down the side of her face until she could cup her cheek and ran her thumb over her delicate skin, "and so will you."

"But you haven't done anything, yet," said Rose, grabbing her wrist lightly and holding them together just a little longer.

"Actually," said the Doctor, pulling away, "I have." And she reached into her pocket, passed her sonic screwdriver and rummaged the empty sweet wrappers until she caught hold of a small piece of metal. When she revealed it, between her thumb and forefinger, it was what looked like a memory chip, because she had decided it should look like a memory chip the same way she had decided she would find it in her pocket. Because that was what she told the program to do. Input/output. Now she knew how it worked, she could bend all around her to her will.

"Kind of feels like it should have been harder," she said, turning over the core in her fingers. She would destroy it once she was out, but it was hard to ignore the gravity of something that held the power to destroy the universe in one fell swoop. "Probably, it would have been if Rose was the kind of person to make this difficult. But then, would she have been someone a program would extract from and give to me? To try and make me stay?"

"I guess this is it, then" said Rose. The Doctor had seen Rose cry enough times to last all of her remaining lives and then some, it seemed unfair that in a world of her own making, she should be forced to experience it again. 

"You don't even feel anything," said the Doctor, almost petulant. 

"But she always cried when you said goodbye." She said it as the Doctor thought it, but it was a good illusion, anyway and hit like a brick. The Doctor wanted nothing more than to drop the core, run to her and wipe the tears from her face with her fingers. Tell her she wouldn't go, not this time, that everything was going to be alright, even knowing that it was all just binary. 

01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101.

She tightened her grip on the core, the edges, more literal than anything else in the room, dug hard into her palm and fingers, reminding her where she was and why she was there. 

"I should probably, definitely, go, now," she said, feet firmly planted to her spot.

Rose's cheeks were wet and pink and hers eyes were shining, but she smiled anyway. "Probably," she said because she would never say "don't".

The Doctor tried to pretend that the fact that the so-called Rose couldn’t actually feel anything mattered. That her existence as an illusion detracted from the gut-wrenching guilt that washed over her as she nodded curtly and walked away, leaving her behind. Again. It was for the best. It was always for the best.

She made her way back to the reception hall, walking by the now empty disco, the lights black, balloons littering the floor and nearly-drunk beers discarded on the tables, kicking paper streamers as she passed. She approached the front desk, took a deep breath and one last look to see Rose standing at the other end of the hall, her hand raised in a small wave, and rang the bell. 

**Author's Note:**

> considered not posting this but, eh, fuck it, if I rewrite, i rewrite. Hope you enjoyed it, anyway x 💖✌


End file.
